Standard must be followed

ALL schools and government services will function and operate according to the “new normal” standard, Prime Minister James Marape says.
In response to questions about the National Pandemic Bill 2020, which was passed in Parliament on Friday, Marape told The National that the “new normal” was not specific.
“This bill does not go into the specifics of the new normal standard,” he said.
“The National Operation Centre (NOC) in the last two months had developed expected requirements on how schools should operate and how public service should be run and how the private sector is engaged and how we travel.
“All these requirements in cognition to the fact that if we break them, we expose not necessarily ourselves but we run the risk of everyone around.
“Those rules should be exposed to be complied with by all work environment or all public service utilities as well as business communities.
“As we come out of the state of emergency, we go into just living and working but the rules will be given to everyone to live within.”
Marape said these were not necessarily harsh rules but being sensitive to the Covid-19 rules, such as spaces, wearing masks in public places and applying social distancing in classrooms and other places.
“It’s not easy to do them all in one go but we have set the standard and we will try our absolute best to polish them as we go along while observing the Covid-19 prevalence,” he said.
“Good thing for us Port Moresby, we don’t have evidence yet, of an active presence of the Covid-19. Under our scientific community, they have encouraged for rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) to be deployed.”
Marape said more than 8,000 RDTs were carried out to establish evidence in the community if there were prevalence of anti-bodies.
He explained that there was no evidence of the Covid-19 in the country, the seven infected nationals in their own immunity had discharged the virus.
“We just have to be prepared for the worst case scenario,” he said.
“This law gives us direction in the event that the outbreak happens in our country. There is a devaluation of functions now, back to the provinces and they will take responsibility as they set up.”